Mr. Speaker, Canadians have new words creeping into their vocabulary: global synchronized economic downturn, recalibration, and listeria outbreak, rather than preventable incident. This carefully crafted spin attempts to remove blame from the government and instead imply action when little or none is taken.
Listeriosis was a real tragedy that cost 22 Canadians their lives in 2008. Depending on what media advisory we read, it was either an outbreak or a preventable incident. If the spin was outbreak, it implied an act of God and was beyond the government's control. If the crisis was in fact a preventable incident, it was absolutely in its purview.
Following the listeriosis disaster, the government ordered a secretive inquiry into the deaths. Weatherill concluded:
We cannot wait for another food-borne emergency to occur and more lives to be lost before we act. While there will be costs in implementing some of these recommendations, the costs of inaction—whether measured by the damage to individual Canadians’ lives, lost revenues and reputation for industry, or Canada’s global competitiveness in an increasingly food safety conscious world—are far greater.
There were 57 recommendations in the Weatherill report, including: provinces should follow more strict safety rules; Ottawa should review the training of federal inspectors; manufacturers must design meat processing equipment that is easy to clean; and Canada's Chief Public Health Officer must take the lead in any future cases of food-borne illness.
Unfortunately, the government ignored the chief recommendation, namely, to have an independent third party verify whether there were enough meat inspectors.
This past fall the American government warned Canada that its meat inspection procedures were too lenient. Had Canadians known, this would have caused us to wonder whether the current food safety regime was as effective as the federal government claimed.
Unless Ottawa took action, Washington might have forbidden the import of Canadian processed meat. As a result, Canada's agriculture minister promised the government would spend $75 million over three years on meat inspection and would hire 70 new inspectors.
Regrettably, in March when I asked my question, it was over two years since the listeriosis tragedy and eight months since the Weatherill investigation, and little had changed. While the government claimed to be moving forward, one of its most over-used phrases, no additional inspectors had actually joined the front lines of food inspection according to the meat inspectors union.
Cameron Prince, vice-president of operations, CFIA, confirmed this fact in his clarification on how the agency would continue to move forward on the Weatherill report. He explained that CFIA had hired and was training 35 inspectors and that an additional 35 inspectors would be hired over the next year.
If in the words of the minister, food inspectors “don't grow on trees”, why did he not take immediate action to ensure enough examiners to avoid a second listeriosis outbreak? Moreover, what can another of Prince's comments actually mean, when he said, “We have adopted a policy of enhanced inspector presence at all federally registered meat processing plants--”?
The federal government continues to have some explaining to do about Canada's food safety system.